Dota 2 Moves Towards Keyless Economy

In an interesting move, Valve is officially moving Dota 2 towards a keyless economy. If you played Dota 2 over the past couple of months, you will have chests for sale that did not require a key to open. Dota’s initial economy was based on Team Fortress 2‘s key economy as is Counter Strike‘s economy. This appears to be a move to open the market in China where there are strict gambling laws in place which partly blocked the sale of keys in those regions.

I like the idea and I enjoyed the 99c sales of treasure items during the lead up to the International. I just wonder how it will affect traders as it now appears there is no benchmark currency within the game. I guess they can still use TF2 keys in trades.

TL;DR: Dota 2 Keys will be removed from the game July 1st 2015.

Here is the update from Dota’s blog:

Mastery Gems

Mastery and Kinetic gem functionality has been merged and the term “Mastery Gem” removed. What were previously called mastery gems are now kinetic gems. Kinetic gems can change animations, change abilities, add or modify particle FX, change ability icons, and modify other features of the item they are attached to.

The following changes have been made to complete the transition to a keyless economy:

Treasure Keys

Treasure Keys are no longer sold on the Dota 2 store.

All basic treasures that were previously opened with a Treasure Key have been removed from the game and the Steam Community Market.

Treasure Keys can now be redeemed for a free unlocked Treasure of your choice. When you use the treasure key a new redemption menu will open. Immortal treasures and some older special event treasures are excluded from this menu, but otherwise the list of treasures is unrestricted. One key can be exchanged for any one treasure. As new treasures are added to the game, they will also be added to this menu.

All treasure keys will expire and be removed from the game one year from now on July 1st, 2015. Keys must be redeemed by that time.